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Law Commencement Speaker Announced

The holder of the highest judicial post in the Northern Mariana Islands will be the commencement speaker for Santa Clara University School of Law’s Class of 2010.

Miguel S. Demapan, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), will be the honored speaker at SCU Law’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 22 at 9:30 a.m. in the Mission Gardens.

In his role as a former Superior Court judge and as the current chief justice, Demapan has presided over and written rulings on key issues for the CNMI, including cases of government bribery and abuse of power. He also recently oversaw an innovative movement to push home-foreclosure cases into mediation, rather than the courts, to help resolve one of the CNMI’s top social crises.

Demapan, who received his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School in 1985, took his current post in 1999, just 11 years after the CNMI Supreme Court was established as the highest body in the islands’ post-WWII judicial system. He is the third jurist to hold this position. Read more.